Education

1. HUMAN EMOTIONS
Gypsy Travis
Published: 2012
Categorie(s): Non-Fiction, Health & fitness, Daily Living,
Family Relationships, Humor
Tag(s): "vignettes of emotions" love hate grief sympathy self-
pity greed humility courage
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2. HUMAN EMOTIONS
by Gypsy Travis
LOVE
1. When I looked at my daughter's tired face and saw her
arms wrapped around the newborn bundle by her side, a hot
and wet spring erupted somewhere in my chest and found re-
lease through my eyes and ran down my cheek.
2. He looked at her with a softness and a longing that si-
lently proclaimed it would last for centuries.
3. When he spoke to her, music broke loose in her brain
and trickled down into her heart, and deeper.
4. His scent lingered on the sweater she caressed as she
folded it gently and laid it on her pillow.
5. She still carried him around in her heart after all these
years, like a beloved Siamese twin who could never be separ-
ated from her.
ANGER
1. She looked at him sprawled there on the bed, sleeping
as if nothing in the universe had ever been out of tune. A hard-
ness like granite sat in her chest, pounding in rhythm to the
snare drums marching in her temples. She called his name
and he turned over, blurring in and out of her vision like a
movie out of focus, a zoom lens gone haywire. She thrashed at
him like a setting hen ripped from her nest, striking only the
tainted air between them.
2. How the hell did she end up always being the only one
who could nurture the sick back to good health? It was
ALWAYS her, always, and the others didn't give a damn that
she had desires and needs of her own, that her life was just
oozing away through the cracks.
FEAR
Pain in the shape of the letter V sat in her lap, paralyzing
her legs. A thudding like a hovering helicopter's beaters
threatened to spring open her chest and she could neither
speak nor swallow. Her arms hung limp as a slaughtered
chicken from the hanger over the boiling cauldron and the
smell of death stuck in her nostrils. Imagined courage was
nonexistent as finality reared its head with beckoning eyes
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3. focused straight on her. She felt hot moisture pool beneath
her and the taste of pungent ammonia as she gasped for air.
HOPE
Each day for a dozen years she'd checked the mailbox for
any word from him and she never left the house at night just in
case he should call. Maybe he had made it through, maybe he
was still alive. Maybe she would hear from him soon.
DESPAIR
As I watched them shovel dirt on her coffin, I was sure
there would never be another sunrise. I was lost from
something I'd never before had to put words together to de-
scribe. The whole world had turned into a black, bottomless
vacuum, sucking me powerless into its suffocating darkness.
GRIEF
When she died, a part of me I couldn't name exploded and
went into orbit around a meaningless existence, fragmenting
my history, beaming me onto an alien planet upon which I had
no clue as to how to travel. Things I'd previously loved doing
no longer served a purpose, for there was no one to share them
with. Nothing that was or had ever been seemed to have any
meaning, and I wondered why the hell did every song, book,
movie or automobile trip remind me of her.
JOY
When finally we talked again, every pain I'd felt in the six-
teen years gone by since I last saw him evaporated and light,
billowy warmth spread over me like butter melting on hot
bread. An ever present hunger was appeased for the first time
since our parting.
RELIEF
I looked at the baby with all her toes and fingers, a full
head of hair and a practicing set of good lungs and I waited to
hear what the doctor was about to tell me. When he said they
had done every test there was to be done and had found no
trace of any abnormalities, I felt like a lost sailor who had just
washed ashore and suddenly discovered the land beneath his
feet after eight months of mental fatigue in a choppy sea. I
just discovered a clear sky after the storm.
JEALOUSY
1. I tried my best shot at putting my best foot forward,
shod in nonchalance when I saw him walk into the room with
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4. HER draped on his arm. She was so beautiful, had everything
in the right places and a smile like the sun dazzling on freshly
opened oyster shells. When I shook her smooth, perfectly man-
icured hand which she so graciously offered, all of my clothes
suddenly seemed to ride up, become ill fitting and too tight. I
could feel the rays of my own light rapidly dimming, casting a
dull shadow. I smiled in spite of my aching jawbone, paralyzed
by the lumps in the glands beneath my ears, and the bitter gall
rising up into my throat. I murmured so demurely that I was
happy to make her acquaintance, and all the while a vision was
forming in my brain; a vision of her: fat, and in rags, laid out
in a stinky, nasty alley with a mangy howling cat rattling
garbage can lids above her head as her life oozed out through
the bullet hole between her still perfectly made up, gaping
eyes.
2. They'd told him this howling, screaming little thing all
bundled up in a fuzzy blue blanket was his new baby brother
and that now he would have somebody to play with. So far, he
hadn't seen this creature do anything but wet its pants and
puke up whatever was in the bottle his mother gave it. That
didn't offer any promise of being one bit of fun, ever, as best he
could tell. Everybody who came into the house now talked
about what a fine looking baby it was, and they acted like they
couldn't even see him anymore. He wondered if he had be-
come invisible or something. Why did they all bend over that
cradle and speak so softly and sweetly to that red, ugly little
thing?
ENVY
Although I really wished I could be glad and happy for him,
I resented that my brother won the new Cadillac in the New
Years Day giveaway. He only bought one chance and I had
bought ten. He and his wife both bought new cars last year,
and here I am still driving this old pickup truck that looks like
it fought the battle at Little Bighorn and lost.
LONLINESS
The sun had barely set, and yet it seemed the night had
already been with her for days. She'd read all the magazines
in the house, even the full page advertisements on how to gain
weight and not let anyone ever bully you again. There was
nothing on the television set but reruns and none of them
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5. interested her any more now than they had the first time they
were shown. Her skin felt strange, as if it belonged on
someone else's body and she wished she had someone to talk
to. She went to the refrigerator and took out everything she
could think of that would go together in a sandwich which she
was quite aware that she did not need to eat at all.
SELF-PITY
I never knowingly did anything bad to anyone in my whole
life. All I've ever done is try to help other folks, even some-
times when I needed helping myself far more than they did.
Now, just you look at the way things are. I don't have one cent
to my name and my old car is broken down, and do you think
anybody's there for me? Do you think anybody gives a shit at
all what kind of a predicament I'm in? No siree, they don't. I
could just rot away up here in this god-forsaken place and the
ants could have my bones picked slick as a wet glass eye be-
fore a one of them ever thinks about coming to see about me.
VANITY
The bra cut into my skin like a string pulled tight into the
top of an inflated balloon, but it surely did give me a nice pro-
file in that new sweater. And every stip I took in those five
inch heels was pure agony come to hang on the cross. But
some people often made the comment that I had the nicest legs
in three counties and I aimed to keep on making them think it
for as long as I could. After all, too soon your looks fade out
like madras in a hot wash and then it's all over but the monthly
weiner roast down at the rest home.
AMBITION
She aimed to have that position one way or the other. It
would put her in a whole new tax bracket and then her loan
would be approved for a condo down at Wellington Estates
where the most influential people in the company lived. She
would stop at nothing short of sleeping with the balding, fat
second vice-president. In fact, she'd even do that, for she had
the brains to handle the job with ease. It was just getting
there that was so hard. To hell with the means to the end. It
was indeed the end, or the top in this situation that mattered
most to her.
GREED
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6. Nothing was ever enough for him. He wanted not just the
biggest and best car in the neighborhood, he wanted two of
them. He would hire someone to do menial work for him and
then find fault in how they did it and refuse to pay them. He
seemed to feel that everyone else in the world had been cre-
ated for the sole purpose of serving him, to make him happy
and rich, even at the expense of sacrificing their own lives and
happiness. He would accept no less than the prime cut from
any piece of meat, and then he'd take his portion from the
middle.
HUMILITY
I stood there before these people who had no sight and I
shrank in my own smallness when I realized how narrow and
limited I had allowed my vision to become.
STUBBORNESS
He hadn't the slightest intention of going to her mother's
house for Christmas or any other holiday for that matter. He'd
always spent the holidays with his own mother and intended to
do so until the day one of them died. Either she could come
with him to his mother's as he wished her to do, or else he
would make matters too financially difficult for her to do any-
thing else.
COURAGE
Whatever happened in the next ten seconds or the next ten
decades, I knew I would stand up to him from there on out. He
would never strike me nor my children again. I had knocked
him cold with a hammer and then called the police. I was
ready for him now. If he woke up before they got there, I
would whack him again, and again if necessary. I'd do
whatever it took. I wondered why I had never done it before.
TIMIDITY
The little boy stood in the doorway, his big brown eyes look-
ing up from under a bowed shock of blond hair. He stood still
and silent, holding one hand in his mouth, and with the other
he clutched a small teddy bear to his chest.
BOREDOM
I wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into as I
sat at the table and tried to feel or fake some hint of interest in
these people. They were just saying a minimum of words, and
even less feeling was passing between them. I did not
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7. understand this, it was so alien to me and how I had lived be-
fore I ever knew them. I wondered if this was all, if this was
the way it had always been with them. More frighteningly I
wondred if this was all that would ever be with them, and I
wondered could I possibly ever bear to sit through another
such event.
AMUSEMENT
I had long ago stopped letting his little underhanded games
bother me. I detached myself as if I were a spider hanging on
a web high up in the corner of the ceiling, and I kept a close
watch to see what he would try to pull off next. I suppose in a
sense I was like the blood-thirsty spectator at a boxing match,
just waiting to see when he'd finally get knocked down and if
so, I wondered if he could get up again.
PRIDE
Although she'd topped the eighty mark well over half a dec-
ade ago, she still sat in her parlor worrying about the curtains
upstairs turning yellow if they weren't taken down and cleaned
periodically. It was unimaginable that her hair be out of place
or her nails unpolished. And to leave the house without her
shoes polished and her clothes freshly pressed was
unthinkable.
SUSPICION
It was the third time this week she'd answered the tele-
phone to a woman's voice, the same woman's voice, saying she
had the wrong number. He'd told her he was going to have to
put in more hours at the office, go in earlier and leave later.
She'd noticed he'd bought new underwear recently, and was
wearing the expensive cologne his daughter bought him for
Christmas the year before; cologne he'd left untouched for
eight months, until now. He rarely spoke to her over the morn-
ing paper anymore, and most of his time at home, he spent
sleeping. She would be looking at his clothes more carefully
now, and watching for the other tell-tale signs. She would be-
gin making copies of all their important documents and stash
them in a safe deposit box, along with all the cash she could lay
hands on. She'd check with an attorney to be sure she knew
all her rights under the law, and she'd wait.
SHAME
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8. She learned early on that it was easier to lie and say her
father was dead than it was to admit he was serving a life sen-
tence in prison for raping a child.
GUILT
If only she hadn't been rushing so to slip out and meet her
lover, she would have remembered to turn off the burner on
the stove. Now, because she was seeking selfish pleasures,
everything she had worked all these years to help her husband
build and preserve was destroyed.
GRATITUDE
So many wonderful things had come about in the past few
weeks, it seemed to her the only fitting thing to do other than
be thankful was to try to give something back to the world, to
life.
INDECISION
What should she do? Should she stay here where everything
is established and safe in the sense of knowing what it is, or
should she go where her heart tells her to go and let the devil
take tomorrow?
ANXIETY
Her palms were sweating and cold, and her insides felt like
the paint shaker down at the Sherwin-Williams store. The
smoke from her third cigarette in the last fifteen minutes was
hanging in her chest, threatening to choke her. Every time she
put her foot on the rungs of the chair, her knee would jerk up
and down like it was on some puppeteer's string doing a rock
and roll show.
WORRY
What if the tumor was malignant and there was nothing the
medical people could do about it? Who would take the baby,
and what would they do with Delilah? The baby could adjust if
she were placed with people who would really care for her and
love her, but the thought of Delilah having to make it among
strangers was more than she could bear to think about right
now.
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